


hver ertu (who are you)

by klixxy



Series: hver er ég (znt x haikyuu) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!, 残響のテロル | Zankyou no Terror | Terror in Resonance
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Crossover, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Poetic, Reincarnation, Yamaguchi Tadashi-centric, also wantch znt, and my hands started typing on their own, honestly, hopefully i'll finish nine's part soon?, i had to get all my feels out of my system, i was just so broken after watching znt, idk what this is, in a good way, it'll break your heart, listen to von y'all, no beta we die like five, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26248603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klixxy/pseuds/klixxy
Summary: Yamaguchi Tadashi dreams of a world that is not his.Or, Nine and Twelve meet again, seventeen years too late, seventeen years too early, in a lifetime not their own.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Nine & Twelve (Zankyou no Terror), Nine/Twelve (Zankyou no Terror)
Series: hver er ég (znt x haikyuu) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906825
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	hver ertu (who are you)

**Author's Note:**

> haha, yes. i finally got around to watching zankyou no terror and safe to say it destroyed me. it's gonna haunt me around for the next fucking year.
> 
> i know I'm kinda screaming into the void here because like,,, last i checked there were less than 400 works in the znt tag, but here. i needed to get my feels out and this is what happened. I'm just emotionally broken right now.

Yamaguchi Tadashi dreams of a world that is not his. Or, perhaps it is his, and the one he is living in is only a duplicate substitute. 

He walks through a world of tangled nightmares and crisscrossing mysteries. He wanders through visions of bursting red and orange, of heat that swelters against his skin and beats his heart alive and his face aglow. He sinks through eyes of pure ice and a voice of grey tinged blue that simmers in the air and dances among his gaze. He flies through a Tokyo that is burnt black to the ground.

His mind echoes with phantom words and crackled memories that are not quite his own and yet too complicated and twisting to be anything but. His ears ring with voices that sound so very achingly familiar, but he is sure he has never encountered before. Within his brain, things that he has never bothered to learn pulse in the festering darkness; bombs and majestic explosions, Oedipus and Arahabaki, a motorcycle, a Ferris wheel, the sight of 24 graves of wood, sticking upright amidst the soil. 

The blazing pain of a bullet through his chest.

Sometimes, he will look up and meet a phantom gaze of rippling black.

Sometimes, he will think back and remember a hallway and an apartment, a gentle parting of paths, an expression that tears through his heart, a quiet and serious _“Please don’t go.”_

Sometimes, the voice of a ghost will call to him in his memories.

A name that feels like a part of him. A name that belonged to a him that he isn’t sure he was ever meant to remember.

_Twelve._

He had been bombs and color and pain. He had been one half of a towering Sphinx, a haunting Ferris wheel in the moonlight, the sight of red blooming hundreds of meters above in the sky. He had been a mystery and a sinner and a hero. He had been a criminal waiting for Oedipus to deliver him justice. Waiting for a death that was inevitable, that would perhaps, just perhaps grant him the peace that life could never have offered him. 

And yet, after everything, here he is.

Living a life that isn’t his.

Living a life that is.

And yet, after everything, when he is seventeen years old, he steps into a gym and meets eyes cold as ice. He meets black hair and black eyes and a voice of navy blue tinted grey. He meets the boy that is a dark, stabilizing silhouette within the crashing memories of his dreams, of the life that he had used to breathe and call his own. He meets him, this boy who is not quite the haunted picture he sees in his mind- this boy who is not quite the same, not quite any different. 

He meets him.

 _("It was always just the two of us.")_

The remnants of a history long past. Two ghosts living again in a life that is but isn’t theirs.

Kageyama Tobio isn’t quite Nine.

That’s okay.

That’s okay, because Yamaguchi Tadashi isn’t quite Twelve either.

The changing rooms to Karasuno Highschool Volleyball club are messy and loud and chaotic. It is nothing like cool, silent apartments, like solitude that is less lonely because it is not an _I_ more than a _we_ , nothing like companionable silence or looking down from the top bunk to a dreamlike shadow against the lights of the city outside the window. And because Yamaguchi isn’t quite brown-haired or brown-eyed, because his smiles are less wide but no less happy, because Yamaguchi Tadashi isn’t quite the ghost that lives on his memories, he thinks that he might just prefer this: the screaming and the sunlight and the chaotic camaraderie.

He joins Kageyama in the corner as his teammates scream on, something private and secluded enveloping them. Nobody pays them any mind, more focused on the racket that Nishinoya and Tanaka are creating by the doorway. 

Kageyama does not wear a black long-sleeve shirt. Instead, he wears a white sweater emblazed with the words KARASUNO HIGHSCHOOL. He does not wear glasses or carry around earphones wherever he goes. He does not thumb through his phone or play chess or clutch at his ears, trying to drown out the sound of ringing from a phantom past. His eyes are cold as ice, but his cheeks are softer and his shoulders are not quite as tense. 

“Nine.” Yamaguchi greets quietly, because he’s seen the dreams and the memories. Because he’s seen the atomic bomb and he’s heard the riddles, watched an airplane go up in flames, felt the weight of a yellow mask upon his face. Because he knows that Kageyama has seen it too, in the strangely familiar way that Kageyama will close his eyes as he focuses, in the way that sometimes he will hear him humming music from a colder land. In the way that sometimes he will speak and Kageyama will turn to him imperceptibly, something within him responding to the sound of his voice.

He knows. 

Kageyama knows.

There is nothing to be done about it.

“Twelve.” Kageyama replies finally, eyes of ice peering down at him, except they are softer, lighter, not quite as dark. The sunlight from the open window shades him with a palette of gold and yellow and white, making him look so much younger than he actually is. Baby fat clings to his jawline, and his body is strong from a proper diet. He is such a stark contrast from the lanky teen he sees against the darkness of the windowpane of a city at sleep, the boy that had never really been a _boy_ that he sees outlined against a thousand lights of blinking red and yellow and green and blue. 

_(“... I just knew it’d happen today.” Sitting up in a bunk bed, meeting eyes at midnight, lights reflected on the windowpane._

_“... I’m sorry Nine.” Turning around, racing into the rain._

_Parting ways._

_“He needs you too.” Two eyes, looking up at him past a barrier of bombs._

_The moon hanging in the sky._

_The view from the top of the Ferris wheel._

_A phone hanging in his hand._

_Guilt.)_

Yamaguchi huffs out a little laugh. Kageyama’s voice is the exact same as he remembers it in his memories. But not quite. Grey tinged blue. Blue tinted grey. What a strange phenomenon that is, how a person can be the same but not so. How somebody can have the same voice and the same memories but bear a different name and face. How somebody who has lost their life once already can start over once more, and the burden will cast lighter upon their shoulders.

Decades ago, their names were Nine and Twelve.

Decades ago, they were the two halves that made up Sphinx.

Decades ago, they lived lives tangled in a past of darkness, lived only for Oedipus to bring them justice.

But that is from a world that has long since passed.

Today…

Today, Yamaguchi Tadashi stands next to Kageyama Tobio in the sunlight of a highschool volleyball clubroom, nothing more than a young teen of seventeen years old. He is not a bomber or a terrorist or an orphan. He does not bear a number for a name, cold and clinical. He has never ridden a motorcycle or seen the haunting view of a bomb hanging in the stratosphere like a miniature sun. 

He has never jumped into a swimming pool with his clothes on or climbed a fence to freedom with agonizing heat at his back.

He has never been shot through the heart.

The fact stands that Yamaguchi Tadashi is not quite Twelve.

That’s okay.

He doesn’t need to be.

“Jambo, Kageyama-kun.” He says after a strange silence. Something like fate or the universe hums in the air, drawing something poignant into this one moment. Sunlight streams in through the window. Their clubmates laugh raucously from outside the door. An odd smile tugs at his lips, and Yamaguchi can not place the emotion that is clogging his throat and stinging at his chest. There is an age-old nostalgia, in those words, in this familiarity; an ache from a life that is not quite his own. Kageyama stares back at him with eyes older than seventeen years, with a mind that also remembers bombs and riddles and an explosion wracking the sky. A smile quirks his lips; a smile that flashes in the back of his mind, yet ever so slightly different.

They are Nine and Twelve.

Yamaguchi and Kageyama.

Sphinx.

They meet again, seventeen years too late, seventeen years too early, in a lifetime not their own.

They meet again.

This time, however, they are given a chance to live.

*

_("Remember us...")_


End file.
